3 ms·

No, you need to think about what it means when all cars are electric. Current charging speeds lead to long queues at chargers like this: https://www.thedrive.c

No, you need to think about what it means when all cars are electric. Current charging speeds lead to long queues at chargers like this: https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-meant-hours-long-supercharger-lines-over-thanksgiving https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-... No car on the road at the moment is capable of making full use of 350 kW CCS chargers (the Porsche Taycan comes closest at 270 kW). Ideally you'd want a flat charging curve at 350 kW to allow for more cars to be served by each charger. If you had a flat charging curve at 350 kW it would take about 13 minutes to go from 0 to 80% state of charge on a 100 kWh battery. Still slower than fueling an ICE car and still not full battery capacity, but you should be able handle 4 cars per hour per charger.

dmitriid 6y ago
> you should be able handle 4 cars per hour per charger. It's still abysmally slow.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  Yes, there will still need to be more charge points than there are fuel pumps but your charging won't necessarily be exclusively at DC fast chargers. It will be a mix of DC and AC charging. For example, if you're on a road trip you might DC fast charge during the day and then slow charge overnight at a hotel so you start the day with a full battery.
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    I guess it's feasible, but as of last year I've never seen a charger at a hotel. My office had maybe a dozen, which is already not enough—EV drivers were required to go outside and move their cars after a few hours. I don't know how often someone who needs one is screwed.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      I always charge at my AirBNB. Just need an external 120V outlet. An RV-style outlet would work for L2 power levels. That’s not that uncommon.
      - erik_seaberg 6y ago
        Is it hard to find one with a garage rather than street parking? They don’t seem to offer a search filter for that.
        Robotbeat 6y ago
        Each time I've just parked in a driveway and ran a cord to an external outlet. BTW, 63% of US housing units have a garage or a carport. That doesn't even count those that have just a driveway. I have a garage, but I solely park and charge outside (my garage is my COVID work-from-home office space away from the kids...). In a place that experiences 4 seasons.
        erik_seaberg 6y ago
        I’m a little dubious about that stat. I’ve had a carport space, but it had no power and was hundreds of yards away from my (upstairs) apartment. It’s not an impossible problem but it’ll take a ton of installations approved by property managers and that work has barely started.
_ph_ 6y ago
It is less about charging speed but rather charger availability vs. demand. Of course, it is easer to provide high availability if the charging/refueling ist relatively fast, but at any given speed you can compute the number of charge/refueling points needed to prevent waiting times beyond a given limit. There can be hour-long queues at fuel stations too, just there are enough fuel stations that this is a very rare thing, but just look at the people queuing up at fuel stations when a hurricane approaches.
lenkite 6y ago
They really need to make swappable batteries which are pre-charged and ready to 'fit in'. This current charging network simply does not scale IMHO.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  They don’t. Tesla tried and stopped after a short time. It’s just not worth it as charging has got much better. Charging scales better than any other new load we’ve added to the grid (such as air conditioning) as the vast majority of charging will be flexible within roughly 24 hours. After doubling like once a decade or so for a century, electricity demand has been constant or even falling for the last 5-10 years, which has been a major strain on utility finances. The extra flexible demand from electric cars is going to be hugely important for funding the maintenance and upgrading of our electric grid.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    > Tesla tried and stopped after a short time. It’s just not worth it as charging has got much better. Nio has succeeded where Tesla failed. Nio does swapping and charging: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33670482/nio-swappable-batteries-lease/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33670482/nio-swappable-ba... https://insideevs.com/news/448165/nio-completed-1-millionth-battery-swap/ https://insideevs.com/news/448165/nio-completed-1-millionth-...
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      Tesla succeeded. It just wasn't worth it. Not in the States, at least. It's quite possible it makes more sense elsewhere.
Robotbeat 6y ago
This is just the wrong way to think about scaling electric cars. Current electric cars do about 90% of their charging at home. As the battery size increases, this number would (for the same people) actually INCREASE. I do DC fast charging for my 80 mile range Leaf, but for well over a year I haven’t gone more than 100 miles from home with it. If I had a 250 mile Bolt or whatever, I would’ve had no reason for any away from home charging. 300, 400, and 500 mile electric cars (like Tesla offers) have even less reason to charge not-at-home. And Level 1 and 2 charging at home or work or other destinations is WAY cheaper per watt of installed charging capacity than DC fast chargers. So if you want ubiquitous electric cars, the solution isn’t to just scale out DC fast charging, but instead make exterior outlets ubiquitous. Add a relay-controlled outlet to every light pole and parking meter. All apartment parking lots. Many business parking lots. Cost per watt for DC fast chargers is around $1. For a home charger, it’s about $0.10 to $0.20, and often essentially “free” as you just use the included charger and plug into an external outlet or a drier outlet in a garage. DC fast charging stations should be reduced in cost, but you don’t need to increase the speed that much as there are diminishing returns to doing so. Just add more slots. It is on long trips where DC fast charging is largely unavoidable, but even still, 500 mile range covers quite a lot of area and all but likely-multi-day trips. If I can charge at my destination, I don’t necessarily need a fast charger. The solution is to make sure there’s enough L1 (external outlets, which are only like $100 apiece) and L2 chargers (can be bought for as low as $200 now... with installation cost no more than, say, an RV or drier outlet) so that you DON’T need such massive DC fast charging infrastructure. This is hard when few people have electric cars but becomes much easier when most people do as apartment complexes will install outlets on parking spaces as a matter of course. Same for workplaces, metered parking spots, etc. A cheap IOT-controlled-relay external outlet is something that would really help make this more practical. Hard to get traction when electric cars are a small portion of overall cars.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > This is just the wrong way to think about scaling electric cars. Nope. It's the practical reality of what needs to happen when there are ever more electric cars on the road.

dmitriid 6y ago

> you should be able handle 4 cars per hour per charger. It's still abysmally slow.

clouddrover 6y ago
Yes, there will still need to be more charge points than there are fuel pumps but your charging won't necessarily be exclusively at DC fast chargers. It will be a mix of DC and AC charging. For example, if you're on a road trip you might DC fast charge during the day and then slow charge overnight at a hotel so you start the day with a full battery.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  I guess it's feasible, but as of last year I've never seen a charger at a hotel. My office had maybe a dozen, which is already not enough—EV drivers were required to go outside and move their cars after a few hours. I don't know how often someone who needs one is screwed.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    I always charge at my AirBNB. Just need an external 120V outlet. An RV-style outlet would work for L2 power levels. That’s not that uncommon.
    - erik_seaberg 6y ago
      Is it hard to find one with a garage rather than street parking? They don’t seem to offer a search filter for that.
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        Each time I've just parked in a driveway and ran a cord to an external outlet. BTW, 63% of US housing units have a garage or a carport. That doesn't even count those that have just a driveway. I have a garage, but I solely park and charge outside (my garage is my COVID work-from-home office space away from the kids...). In a place that experiences 4 seasons.
        erik_seaberg 6y ago
        I’m a little dubious about that stat. I’ve had a carport space, but it had no power and was hundreds of yards away from my (upstairs) apartment. It’s not an impossible problem but it’ll take a ton of installations approved by property managers and that work has barely started.

_ph_ 6y ago

It is less about charging speed but rather charger availability vs. demand. Of course, it is easer to provide high availability if the charging/refueling ist relatively fast, but at any given speed you can compute the number of charge/refueling points needed to prevent waiting times beyond a given limit. There can be hour-long queues at fuel stations too, just there are enough fuel stations that this is a very rare thing, but just look at the people queuing up at fuel stations when a hurricane approaches.

lenkite 6y ago

They really need to make swappable batteries which are pre-charged and ready to 'fit in'. This current charging network simply does not scale IMHO.

Robotbeat 6y ago
They don’t. Tesla tried and stopped after a short time. It’s just not worth it as charging has got much better. Charging scales better than any other new load we’ve added to the grid (such as air conditioning) as the vast majority of charging will be flexible within roughly 24 hours. After doubling like once a decade or so for a century, electricity demand has been constant or even falling for the last 5-10 years, which has been a major strain on utility finances. The extra flexible demand from electric cars is going to be hugely important for funding the maintenance and upgrading of our electric grid.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > Tesla tried and stopped after a short time. It’s just not worth it as charging has got much better. Nio has succeeded where Tesla failed. Nio does swapping and charging: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33670482/nio-swappable-batteries-lease/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33670482/nio-swappable-ba... https://insideevs.com/news/448165/nio-completed-1-millionth-battery-swap/ https://insideevs.com/news/448165/nio-completed-1-millionth-...
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Tesla succeeded. It just wasn't worth it. Not in the States, at least. It's quite possible it makes more sense elsewhere.

Robotbeat 6y ago

This is just the wrong way to think about scaling electric cars. Current electric cars do about 90% of their charging at home. As the battery size increases, this number would (for the same people) actually INCREASE. I do DC fast charging for my 80 mile range Leaf, but for well over a year I haven’t gone more than 100 miles from home with it. If I had a 250 mile Bolt or whatever, I would’ve had no reason for any away from home charging. 300, 400, and 500 mile electric cars (like Tesla offers) have even less reason to charge not-at-home. And Level 1 and 2 charging at home or work or other destinations is WAY cheaper per watt of installed charging capacity than DC fast chargers. So if you want ubiquitous electric cars, the solution isn’t to just scale out DC fast charging, but instead make exterior outlets ubiquitous. Add a relay-controlled outlet to every light pole and parking meter. All apartment parking lots. Many business parking lots. Cost per watt for DC fast chargers is around $1. For a home charger, it’s about $0.10 to $0.20, and often essentially “free” as you just use the included charger and plug into an external outlet or a drier outlet in a garage. DC fast charging stations should be reduced in cost, but you don’t need to increase the speed that much as there are diminishing returns to doing so. Just add more slots. It is on long trips where DC fast charging is largely unavoidable, but even still, 500 mile range covers quite a lot of area and all but likely-multi-day trips. If I can charge at my destination, I don’t necessarily need a fast charger. The solution is to make sure there’s enough L1 (external outlets, which are only like $100 apiece) and L2 chargers (can be bought for as low as $200 now... with installation cost no more than, say, an RV or drier outlet) so that you DON’T need such massive DC fast charging infrastructure. This is hard when few people have electric cars but becomes much easier when most people do as apartment complexes will install outlets on parking spaces as a matter of course. Same for workplaces, metered parking spots, etc. A cheap IOT-controlled-relay external outlet is something that would really help make this more practical. Hard to get traction when electric cars are a small portion of overall cars.

clouddrover 6y ago
> This is just the wrong way to think about scaling electric cars. Nope. It's the practical reality of what needs to happen when there are ever more electric cars on the road.